DISTRACTIONS!

The view from my studio window is at once an inspiration and a distraction. Today the sky is low, grey and threatening, the rising wind is beginning to whip the wavetops into white foam, and the gannets are putting on a magnificent display of synchronised high-diving on the shoals of coalfish fry and sand-eels (which seem to be plentiful this year) in Breiwick Bay.

But, as long as I am gazing at this spectacle, I am ignoring my full inbox and pending tray, and putting little completed work into my outbox. The trouble is, I am too easily distracted. On the way north from the mainland, on the Northlink ferry "Hrossey", on Sunday night, I bought a book, from the onboard shop, entitled "At Close Quarters" by Gerald Seymour. Yesterday, I just had to finish reading it. I couldn't put it down, and all work-related activity was suspended while it had me in its vice-like grip. Now that it has released me to go about the vexing business of earning a living as a self-employed artist, here am I watching these gannets.

Not that I haven't been busy these last few weeks. I've sold five paintings locally, a further three at Duff House, and one on my way back to Aberdeen! And there have been a few prints going too. So it's clear that my bills are going to be paid for the next couple of months. But I seem to have created little in the way of new artwork this summer. Just two new oil paintings (shown above) and a couple of alterations/improvements have come off the "easel" over the last two months, since finishing the work for the Duff House tea-room exhibition. I have just one more commissioned work in progress, and lots of ideas which have yet to be realised on board or canvas. So distraction is a counter-productive force right now.

What could be described as another distraction was my trip south last weekend, to dot the necessary "i"s and cross the essential "t"s after the Duff House showing, and remove the unsold works from their store-room. These, which formed the overwhelming majority of those which I had hung so optimistically six weeks earlier, have been taken, in my brother's Fiesta, back to Aberdeen. There they will remain in storage at my brother's house until someone with available transport arrives to take them back to Shetland. Six of them, however, will be going on display again, this time at the Musa Art Cafe's Coast exhibition, which begins on September 7th at their premises at Exchange Street, Aberdeen. I have been given a whole lot of invitation cards, for the opening night, which I've got to dish out to people. I'm having trouble identifying recipients - would you care for one, or two, or six? Drop me an email (jim@tait-gallery.co.uk) with your postal address, and I'll send you however many you need (within reason!). You'll have to be quick, though!

So, life is full of attractive and compelling diversions, which entice an artist away from the straight and narrow path of creative endeavours, and drive him down non-productive alleyways. Family events, the administrative duties of self-employment and commercial activities, along with the frailty of human nature itself, all conspire to distract him from the serious business of painting pictures. Who'd be an artist, eh?